The second edition was written by James Lee. He was not involved with the first edition, so he had the choice of reusing the original material, or rewriting/augmenting where he felt that was more appropriate. In the end, James ended up rewriting far more often than not

This
Simon Cozens blog, however,
claims that more than 25 percent of the original text was used in the second edition,
which led to a dispute between Simon and Apress about royalty payments.

The third edition
was written by James Lee and published by Apress in 2010.
No mention of Simon Cozens or Peter Wainwright this time.
Though there were some complaints about the publisher blazoning
"covers Perl 5.10" on the front cover (apparently without consulting the author)
even though the book
does not cover key Perl 5.10 features.

Finally, last week,
Perl Weekly
reported that
Ovid is writing a new Wrox book "Beginning Perl".
So Wrox seems to be still in business.
Is this the fourth edition of the same "Beginning Perl" book?
Or a new one with same title?
Will the author be Ovid "with" James Lee, Simon Cozens and Peter Wainwright?
Who are Michalski and Payne?
And will there be another skirmish over royalties?
This book has a really complicated lineage. :)